Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday April 23, 2008 @02:02PM
from the good-times-with-molten-metal dept.

holy_calamity writes "DARPA is working on a weapon which is similar to one first described by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1955 novel Earthlight — firing jets of molten metal using strong electromagnetic fields. The Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) will function on a smaller scale than Clarke's fictional blaster. DARPA's write-up says it could be 'packaged into a missile, projectile or other platform and delivered close to target for final engagement and kill.' Clarke is also widely credited with suggesting geostationary communications satellites — what other ideas of his will come to pass?"

Then where the hell is my flying car, and why do 80% of my countrymen still believe in bronze-age myths?

Would you people give it up on the flying car already? People have invented flying cars. Flying cars aren't the problem. The problem is that people are too stupid to navigate in 3D space, especially when you consider how "well" they seem to be coping with 2D space.

I think its more a problem that people en-masse are too stupid to navigate flying cars.

If there are only a few of them, no problem (although the cost will be higher without that economy of scale), but once you get enough people using them, you need "roads" and people can't be counted on to learn enough to fly cars, or maintain them (if you have to pull over in a car, fine, if you have to pull over in a flying car, look out below?)

Without an "easy" control (semi-automated control/ATC?) and maintenance (outsourced rental?) system flying cars probably are not going to appear any time soon.

Actually the chief problem as I see it is the organization that has made it so near impossible to develop personal aircraft in the first place. The FAA has tailored all regulations to suit Boeing and kin who have the fat wallets and their similarly financed customers. Most Cessna pilots use $10 stop watches mounted to their yoke. Why would anyone do something that sounds so stupid? Because the $400+ FAA certified flight clock found in Cessnas like the plane itself was developed in the 50's and 60's is off by minutes per day and the cheap, made in China stop watch [aircraftspruce.com] will run for months and still keep near perfect time. There hasn't been any real innovation and development in personal aircraft outside of the FAA experimental category in nearly half a century. You still have to control your own air/fuel mix because there aren't any modern "FAA certified" fuel injection systems. It simply costs too much to jump through the hoops. If it wasn't for the FAA that new plane that typically costs as much as a house to purchase would be as cheap if not cheaper than the average passenger car.

I also don't buy the "people are too dumb for 3D" argument either. Most pilots will tell you that learning to fly a small plane is easier than driving a car.

I assume you're absolutely correct on the economics. But I'm very uncertain that enough people are smart enough for 3D.

The hardest part about driving a car isn't operating the vehicle - it's avoiding all the yabbos on road who aren't paying attention. On an open, unoccupied road or a gentle off-road, driving is dead simple.

To steal a line from No Exit, "Driving is other people". But at least in 2D, I can track them all. In 3D, it's going to be a lot harder to monitor drivers where I can see 50 to 10

That's only one of the many reasons. Others would be legal and security issues. On the legal side, every time someone died because they ran out of gas, stalled the engine, or had a mid-air fender bender, someone would get sued. On the security side, how easy would it be for someone like Osama or Ted Kaczynski to load these up with home-made explosives and crash them into buildings? Even without explosives, think of the damage a dozen of these things could do smashing into a building at a few hundred miles p

You do realize that something like a Cesna could hardly carry enough explosives to bring down a building, right? Do you remember the World Trade Center bombing in the 90s? That was a truck loaded with explosives, and it didn't bring down the building. A Cesna couldn't carry a fraction of the explosives in that truck, and doesn't run on jet fuel. The risk of a Cesna taking out a building, or even causing substantial damage, is somewhere between zero and nil.

Yes, it's that, and not at all the fact that we're having trouble stabilizing the design (keeping it upright), or the fact that they're too noisy and fuel costly.

The problem you mentioned could easily be solved by incorporating an onboard computer so that it keeps a minimum distance from other dirvers and buildings. The driver could still actually drive the thing, but it would repel like a magnet from other vehicles thanks to the "3D radar" type equipment.

Then where the hell is my flying car, and why do 80% of my countrymen still believe in bronze-age myths?

Your flying car is delayed while awaiting an engine with higher power-density and higher reliability at lower cost, and a smart enough flight/navigation computer to operate the vehicle in the traffic densities that would be encountered after widespread adoption.

The bronze-age myths persist because religions are ideological rootkits, most of your brethren have been rooted, and the rootkits all include strong imperatives to infect one's offspring. You can't put a stop to the rootkits because society depends on them and hence is patterned to persecute any cleanup effort. Nor can you design a more infectious rational alternative rootkit because you can't rationally answer the universe's many sources of cognitive dissonance, chief among them "you will end", "they'll get away with it", and "religions are rootkits".

In the end you just have to search for and then surround yourself with those occasional outliers, those people who are honest enough to look the universe's uncaring meaninglessness squarely in the eye without reaching for a scripture to anaesthetize themselves with.

In the end you just have to search for and then surround yourself with those occasional outliers, those people who are honest enough to look the universe's uncaring meaninglessness squarely in the eye without reaching for a scripture to anaesthetize themselves with.

I don't get why people are so afraid of the universe being uncaring? It's not that shocking, nor does it affect your life to know this, since it's always been true and never been different. However, if people knew and accepted this they might actually behave more humane, because they'd realize that no deity or karmic force is going to do shit for them.

I don't get why people are so afraid of the universe being uncaring? It's not that shocking, nor does it affect your life to know this, since it's always been true and never been different. However, if people knew and accepted this they might actually behave more humane, because they'd realize that no deity or karmic force is going to do shit for them.

Or perhaps they'd behave LESS humanely, since they'd realize that no deity or karmic force is going to do shit TO them.

There's plenty of examples in history and today of people reckoning that the deity they subscribe to actually wants them to go out and kill innocent people. It works both ways: horrible things have been done in the name of atheistic _and_ religious ideologies.

I think there are a lot of very smart and either atheist or agnostic people out there who behave very well because they can rationalize why behaving well results in a better world than the alternative.

I think there a lot of very smart and either atheist or agnostic people out there who can rationalize why behaving well results in a better world than the alternative. Alas, for some reason, their rationalizations all seem to look curiously like the standard Judeo-Christian Ethos. Which leaves me to wonder

There are many differences. For instance, the commandment is "thou shalt not kill", but most rational people believe it's ok to kill if necessary in self defense. (I do realize that earlier translations probably used the word murder rather than kill.) How about "You shall not commit adultery". The rational mind arrives at this only because marriage is a contract, and it would be wrong to break that contract, and this is because a society that enforces contracts is a stronger society.

But there's a deeper issue with your argument. You are assuming that the commandments were handed down by God, but it's actually quite likely that they were arrived at by one or more smart people (who, after all, would have to be smart if they could read and write at the time). So your argument is just begging the question (circular logic). The reason rational morality looks so much like the judeo-christian commandments is because it was created by rational people. Heck, even if it was created by God, are you saying He's not rational? If you happen to believe the judeo-christian mythos as fact, what's wrong with also trying to understand *why* God made those commandments?

For instance, the commandment is "thou shalt not kill", but most rational people believe

Actually, no. Its "thou shall not commit murder". Some old translations used the word "kill", but few modern ones do. The hebrew word used in most of our originals is the word for murder. I'm not precisely certian how they defined "murder" at the time, but I'd bet it was at least as loose as "most rational people" feel about it. Probably a bit too loose. I wouldn't be suprised if killing a non-Jew, or perhaps even a bad

Whatever happened to "I don't know?" Just because we don't know the answer doesn't mean we have to make one up. Your answer "God did it" is just a placeholder - we've used that placeholder a lot in previous history and we've found the answer before. So you can have that one for now (after all you've lost disease, weather, gravity, the stars, evolution, the soul, dinosaurs, and pretty much everything else attributed to a diety or the supernatural).

There is stuff we don't know about the universe. There is probably more stuff we don't know about the universe than we do know about the universe. But we don't need to fill in the gaps with "God did it" to make ourselves feel better. We can admit we don't know something and try to find the answer rather than make something up and move on. That's the difference in believing in made up fairy tails and "believing in science".

In the specific case of GP you may be correct to claim that "God did it" is a placeholder, but in general you wouldn't be. When theology and science are placed in opposition it's usually because one is being asked questions which are more suited to the other. The question of mechanisms is scientific: the question of root cause is theological / philosophical, so the choice isn't between believing in a god to explain something currently unexplained or believing that there's a scientific explanation yet to be

The texts that religions are based on do not use the claim "God did it" as an end to a conversation or as the answer to a scientific question. Generally, people making that statement as a catch all for the unknown have been using religion to control people rather than to free them. Condemning all religions on this basis is like condemning all scientists because of "cold fusion."

Your argument is known as "God of the Gaps". The problem with it is that as science advances, the gaps get smaller and then so does your God. It also unnecessarily puts religion at odds with science, when they can quite happily operate separately - Science in the land of reality, and religion everywhere else.

Your claim that science is a belief system is to fundamentally misunderstand science. Science is a method of inquiry into the natural world, the only one we know of, that can identify objective truths. It takes zero faith or belief or anything like that to accept the outcomes of the scientific method.

Finally, you are also making an argument from ignorance in your discussion of the big bang. The bottom line is we don't know how it all happened. We don't know what there was before. We don't even know IF there was a "before" at all. If time began then then most of your assertions disappear. Just because you don't understand something isn't a reason to say "god did it".

A car is not a "self-propelled horse." A self-propelled horse is something I can keep at my house and ride to work without needing special infrastructure like roads. There's no point to a self-propelled horse if I have to ride to the road (on both ends of the trip, no less... I guess you'd have to rent a horse at the work end). Many people would end up riding their horse further to reach a road than they would just riding to work!You're talking about an infrastructure problem. There ARE places where you

Nostradamus is also cited as having many of his predictions come true. The problem is, if you make enough predictions it is hard for some of them not to come true. Similarly it is hard to miss shooting a rabbit with a sawn-off shotgun...

Similarly it is hard to miss shooting a rabbit with a sawn-off shotgun

I take it you've never actually tried that? It's really hard to hurt something with a sawed-off shotgun at much beyond 20 feet, and really hard to get that close to a rabbit (unless the rabbit is a pet). Try a.22 instead.

This seems to work on the SAME exact principle as the Depleted Uranium Penetrator. Regular missile with a core of DU, when it strikes, the regular projectile cannot penetrate, but the friction that is created as the DU core moves forward through weapon metal as well as armor metal, heats it up to the point where it doesn't just punch through armor, but ignites and melts its way through. Generally it is presumed that the poor bastards inside the tank or armored emplacement are usually quite unhappy with the results (for about half a second it takes for them to be converted into meat and blood vapors.)

Therefore, it seems DARPA in usual fashion is looking at the best way to help keep raising the national debt level. If anything, the military industrial complex has been the bankers best friend, it has managed to keep spending at insane levels, without really producing any new ways of killing people... not even those who are defenseless and easy to kill in the many innovative ways militaries and governments have devised for the last few centuries.

I mean hell, the missile, bullet, DU Penetrator, APFSDF rounds, all of it, its still the same principle of a hurled projectile, spear, sling stone or arrow. New methods of slinging shit, but still the same old idea. Pretty sad if you think of it. They keep reinventing the wheel, but the wars aren't even fought for land or gold anymore, they're fought so the idiot masses can feel good about themselves. That, there is the worst part of it, as far as I am concerned. Its one thing to fight evil bastards who want to take what is yours, whether it be, life liberty or property, but most of the wars today are fought merely to keep the cattle spending their hard earned income without asking questions. What is not as much sad as it is remarkable is the bovine imbecility present in the vast masses of humanity. THAT amazes me.

The guys who are using it are following orders, and may not even be aware of the implications of their weapons.The people who suffer more are the ones who have to live in the place, after it's been peppered with DU.

The ones who DON'T have to live with the consequences are the ones who gave the orders to use the stuff, in the first place.

"Exactly what I was thinking actually is that like the proposed "futuristic" weapon, the DU penetrators have a fun tendency to liquefy the poor government worshippers inside the armored vehicle."All battlefield anti-tank weapons tend to do nasty things to the crew because it's the best way of ensuring that the thing stops shooting at you.

"Now that I think about it, military wars, where militaries are fighting on both sides, rather than just one military butchering civilians, is a good thing, in a way."

I'd like to know where the military is going to get "molten metal". The stuff isn't just laying around... you need lots of metal & lots of heat.Perhaps the concept will be similar to the uranium-tipped anti-tank weapons that impact the external armor. The pressure of the impact instantly vaporizes the metal, and splatters the interior occupants with the resulting vapor (turning them into ash).

(shrug) Who knows. I've seen the military come-up with some whacky ideas like an airplane carrier that, ins

You seem to be under the impression that they are referring to molten as in faucet hot metal.

My guess is that if you were hit by this stuff, you'd be dead almost before the nerves could send the signal to your brain telling you, "hey bub, I think you're about to die, so here's some pain for the road."

Being scorched by molten metal at high velocity is not how I'd want to go.
I wonder if this would be ruled inhumane. As if it's any worse than a nuke, just on a smaller scale.

Have flamethrowers and napalm been ruled inhumane?

In any case, molten high velocity metal is already widely in use in anti-armor weapons. In the case of spalling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spall [wikipedia.org], the molten metal is from your own vehicle not the weapon.

Napalm is not "legal" to use in war against civilian targets. Not anymore. That's why we use white phosphorous now! It's basically the same thing, but with a different name. Kind of like "Prisoner Of War" vs "enemy combatant".

A really humane weapon is one that sits you down for a spot of tea, explains the situation to you, gives you a brief time to put your affairs in order, notifies your next of kin of your impending doom, and then kills you efficiently and painlessly.

Explosively Formed Penetrators are different from regular High Explosive Anti Tank rounds, which do form a molten jet. In the EFP, the charge is in the shape of a shallow dish, and it forms the lining into a solid penetrator. It works at a much greater standoff distance than a regular HEAT, and is not as much subject to disruption by reactive armor. It is not as good at penetrating the armor of a main battle tank, but is quite good at destroying vehicles and emplacements with lighter armor.

In a conventional HEAT, the charge is in the form of a narrow cone, and the liner is projected as a narrow jet of molten metal. It must explode at the correct standoff distance and the correct angle to be effective, but when it works it works quite well against even heavily armored vehicles.

The fact that the penetrator needs to be harder than the armor illustrates why the penetrators formed by EFP are ineffective. You can't line the cavity with a hard material and expect it to form into a penetrator.You bring up another type of round, which is not so common any more, HESH or High Explosive Squash Head. Basically, the round consists of a plastic explosive and detonator. The plastic explosive squashes into a pancake when it hits the armor and then explodes. It does not penetrate the armor at all

Yes, this 'hit them twice in the same place' technique seems to be common to a number of new weapons systems. And the counter seems to be a renewed interest in Close In Weapons Systems (CIWS) or other Active Protection Systems [wikipedia.org] that can destroy, disrupt, jam, or deflect an incoming projectile before it gets to the armor.

And air-bursting artillery rounds have fragments that fly themselves around friendlies and civilians, and never leave amputee's.

Bullshit. Napalm is no worse then any other area of effect weapon. It just got a bad name in Vietnam because they dumped it on civilians so much.

The only AOE weapon you can begin to argue is inhumane is cluster bombs, simply because they leave so many unexploded bomblets around. Napalm doesn't sit around waiting for some civvie to come by and trigger it ten years later.

I'm not trying to take any credit from Clarke or anything, but many sci-fi writers who seem to "predict" what technology will come to pass are really just up on current blue-sky research. So it's not as if they came up with the idea, they often just found out about some cool research while it was in it's very early stages, decades before anything comes to fruition, and wrote about it.

Sounds sketchy to me. This is already how many types of armor penetrating munitions work. The jet of molten metal is created by a shaped charge. No need to carry around a few tons of foo-foo magnets, batteries, heaters, a vat of annoyingly hot molten metal and so on. While you are setting all that up I'll have blown off the target with a nice simple RPG and escaped.

Yes but what if a chemical explosion was used to power the device? It would be the same as any gun, fairly inert and lightweight with the explosive charge being used to heat the metal and fire the projectile down range?

The same could be said for lasers, using conventional explosives to generate a lot of power in a very small time period and then project that power down range.

...and while you're getting ready to fire the RPG, a sniper takes you out. That's not the point. There's no setup. The entire package is supposed to fit in a missile or the like. MAHEM is supposed to be - judging from the FA and press release - an upgraded version of your standard HEAT round. The listed benefits are better control over the jet; multiple, quasi-aimable jets; and more energy on target.

You beat me to it. Using molten metal as a weapon isn't really Clark's idea. The only thing that Clark added to the equation was using magnets to propel the molten metal. We've been using molten metal created by shaped charges as a penetrator in rockets and missiles since World War II. Replacing the slug with a warhead is the next logical step when you get a working railgun.

and the reign of common sense over mindless militarism and arms races that don't even effectively stop known enemies and only exist so tht congress people can bring home the fat contracts to their districts ?

While this is cool, I really don't understand why DARPA is developing this. It doesn't seem to fill any current need. The enemies that we currently are facing or might reasonably expect to face are not using heavy armor. We, however, and our allies, are fielding lots of tanks and other armored units. So... DARPA is basically developing a weapon that would be most useful against the US, and not very useful for the US?

We've seen time and again weapons designed and built in the US being used against our forces. (Stinger missiles, anyone?) Does DARPA *really* need to be Al Qaida's R&D division?

There's a phrase that's often bandied about on Slashdot by people with your viewpoint, that generals always prepare to fight the last war.

However, this really applies equally well to the arm chair generals on Slashdot that tend to bring the phrase out.

In the case of research into advanced weaponry, obviously we shouldn't just be doing research (such as this) that would only come in handy in the types of war we saw in the past (i.e. in the Cold War).

However, just as true is that we shouldn't be doing only research into advanced weaponry that is useful for "current needs" as you put. The enemy we currently are facing or might reasonably expect to face at the moment is not using heavy armor, therefore you argue we should discontinue research into weapons useful against heavy armor. That seems like a smart investment until an enemy that isn't exactly like the one we face now comes up.

Given the long development time behind advanced military hardware, and the fact that the US's time as the sole superpower in the world seems to be rapidly approaching its end, maybe it's not such a bad idea to be putting at least some of our research money into preparing for future, as well as current threats.

Yes, it's nice to invest in staying on top of our own self-defense. But if you go too far on that path (and if you also spend a lot of effort trying to dominate the rest of the world out of paranoid fear) - then you're basically shooting yourself in the foot.

The US is heavily dependent on global trade. The military supports the trade network and treaties. I agree that there's deep problems with both the way that the military is supplied and how it is used. But there are valid reasons to have such a large military.

They're all going? That's easy, then. Just find out when they're planning to stop by, then have all 23 million Taiwanese people slip out the back door and occupy the mainland while no one is home.

Since everyone in mainland China ia politically conditioned to believe that Taiwan = China, the Chinese invaders will never figure out that the Taiwanese are gone, and will continue fighting amongst themselves while the Taiwanese population sets up s

It's about the politicians and the media convincing the people that it's worth it every month to put $15 billion into their friends' pockets. They're retiring the stealth F117 Blackbird. How much did that thing cost? What was it ever used for? Bombing Panama and Iraq? Are you kidding me?

For what it's worth, Clarke wasn't the first science fiction writer to briefly outline the idea of geostationary satellites - Herman Potonik did so, much earlier. The realized version was much different than his scheme of large manned outer-space outposts. Additionally, the creators of geostationary satellites did not reference Clarke's outline, nor were they even aware of it. Clarke was merely in a position to effectively self-promote his half-similar sci-fi concepts.

No. In the U.S., the government can file for trademarks and patents and the only way they can be used by the general public is if they are licensed. The money then (currently) goes into the general fund. It is not public domain.

I've heard his name, but don't know much about it. Unfortunately, I am one of those handicapped people who can not search Google or lookup on Wikipedia answers to my own questions. So if anyone would kindly please post a short biography or even a link, I would most grateful.